Never Give Up is the chief focus of next week’s installment, though I broke some ground at CrossFit WV and got myself into a handstand against the wall of the gym.

I honestly didn’t think it was possible, not for a guy of my particular girth, but what do you know?

I still have a ways to go before I can do an upside down pushup, but I’m in the parking lot of that particular ballpark.

In related news, I did a visit to my doctor last week. His scale agrees with my scale and his blood pressure cuff agrees with Rite-Aid’s blood pressure cuff.

He took me off the cholesterol medicine and we’re cutting my blood pressure meds in half, with the idea being that if I keep up with the weight loss and exercise, I could be free of the drugs by April.

I still have to go see the kidney doctor, however, which means that six pack of Fat Tire Ale I bought the week before Christmas is still completely intact.

I bought the Fat Tire because it seemed like a less physically taxing beverage than my preferred Big Timber Porter.

Here’s hoping the kidney guy tells me to just relax and have a beer.

I did not make it to self-defense class on Saturday, but plan to go Tuesday night. I could say that I had a good reason, but it was just to get my hair cut; clearly overdue, but not super important.

Also, I think I need to find a new barber.

Read Aloud on Thursday went well. The kids liked “This is a Ball,” by Beck and Matt Stanton, which was about as loopy as anything I could have come up with.

I liked it, too.

Looking ahead into February, I met with my new mentor/host for the month on Saturday to work out a rough schedule and plan of attack. We will start working on the next project soon.

I’m excited about it, though I don’t know how that’s going to fit in with the exercise and diet.

Last thing, I watched “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” on Netflix and started my April project early –well, no, it was more of a preview of things to come, but I did throw out a bunch of stuff and buy a drawer organizer for my kitchen.

There’s not much to report about my attempts at cutting back on social media.

Last weekend wasn’t great. I found myself edging back toward Facebook and Instagram. Rather than just posting what I was supposed to, I loitered a bit and wound up wasting some time scrolling mindlessly.

I’ll try again.

This sounds a little weird because until I can figure out how to get the blog to show up on the main newspaper website, this is being circulated entirely through the power of Facebook.

I post the link on my personal page and that’s my distribution.

So far, it doesn’t feel like I’m getting much traffic, but blogs tend take time and persistence to become noticed.

Nobody is bored enough to start following, but I’m patient and don’t have anything better to do.

Anyway, all I’m doing with this particular resolution is adjust my consumption to a healthy level.

I don’t think social media is evil. It serves a need. Everybody gets bored. Everybody gets lonesome. You just want to talk to someone about the new Netflix show you’re watching, but who in their right mind wants a text or (clutch the pearls) a phone call at 2:30 in the morning?

Why are you even up? Go to bed.

I hope to do better this weekend.

Meanwhile, this week with CrossFit has gone very well. I should make it to five classes total this week, including one in Hurricane and another in South Charleston.

I have also begun to finalize what I will be doing next month and what I’ll be doing in May. March and April are a little up in the air at the moment, but I have some good leads.

Editor’s note: Reporter Bill Lynch started the new year on a bold mission: to immerse himself in a different facet of life for a full month — every month — for all of 2016, and write about it along the way. The idea is to take something he knows precious little about, so he started with healthy food and opted to go vegan for January. This is the third weekly installment on how a meat-and-cheese kind of guy goes a month with out a burger.

Current goal weight: 180 pounds, though I am considering dropping that to 170.

Weight medical professionals believe I should be: 144 or approximately the weight of a chubby wildebeest.

Blood pressure: 97/70 (medicated, but we’re checking with the doc this afternoon about cutting back or dropping the meds –fingers crossed. I could spend that extra money on HBO)

Caffeine: Two cups of pretty decent coffee.

Cans of diet soda consumed this week: Enough that I know I’ve had too much.

Captain America t-shirt: Today, I’m wearing a dress shirt, khakis and dress shoes, which is very much out of costume. Four people have told me how nice I look, which is an improvement from yesterday when I was told that I looked taller in print, but that I’m more handsome in person.

I get the strangest comments from random men on the street or in grocery stores.

During the year I spent trying to be a vegan, I attended the Kanawha Valley Vegan Potluck several times. I never had a bad meal and always had at least one thing that seemed much better than I thought it had any right to be.

Every now and again, someone will ask me why I didn’t stick with the lifestyle and the diet. The short answer is that it was far easier not to be a vegan than it was to try and remain so.

Other people can do that just fine, but it was a lot of stress for me.

These days, my diet is plant heavy and healthier than before I did the year as a vegan. I make a lot of meatless meals, eat veggies I didn’t eat before, but I’m not a vegetarian.

Still, I learned a lot from going to the Vegan Potluck. You can pick up recipes, ideas and eat pretty good.

Looking at the start of the new year to get healthier, make more environmentally responsible life choices ? A vegan diet can offer all of these. Sit down over a plant based meal with area vegans, for wide ranging discussions and delish food. Not sure what to bring if you are coming for the first time, just bring something simple, fruit, or hummus. Lots of recipes ideas are also available on the internet. All food is made without any animal products.

Things are going along swimmingly with CrossFit. (no actual swimming is involved).

Friday evening, I tried out CrossFit Never Give Up in South Charleston. Today, I’m off to Mountain State Force CrossFit in Hurricane. By the end of the week, I should be visiting a CrossFit in St. Albans and, hopefully, making the trip to Huntington next week for CrossFit Thunder.

In between, I’ll be doing the WODs at CrossFit WV.

It’s a lot of CrossFit.

Meanwhile, I have rejoined self-defense class at Butch Hiles Brazillian Jujitsu –and by rejoined, I mean I attended one class over the weekend, the first in several months.

We learned some stuff about take downs and getting out of one type of headlock.

I also read to my usual groups of second graders. They weren’t fans of “Nate the Great.”

I don’t think they liked the old school art and they may not have been able to follow the detective story plot well.

The other book, “I Will Not Read This Book,” was a modest hit –just too short for the time allowed.

I’ll need to dig up something better for this week, perhaps do a little research.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions for books 7-year-olds might like?

The kids like rhymes and humor, but still lean more toward books with lots of pictures instead of something text driven.

Last weekend, I got started with trying to loosen the grip social media has on me.

While I didn’t manage to stay completely off Instagram or Facebook, I did cut it back a lot. I was completely off Friday, mostly off Instagram and Facebook Saturday and used it a little bit on Sunday.

I’m going to call that encouraging. The point isn’t to shun social media, just get it back in check and keep away from mindlessly scrolling through canned updates and pictures of food, which feels a little like flipping through a magazine to look at the advertisements.

I hope to cut off social media after 6 p.m. tonight and, again, mostly stay off the sites until Monday morning. I will probably post check-ins for my current month’s project, which is coming along swimmingly.

It’s not easy being last, but somebody has to do it.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be visiting with two additional CrossFit gyms, taking a class with each of them.

The trainer at Never Give Up in Charleston promised something special.

I am hopeful she meant cake.

I don’t even want to know how many burpees that would cost.

Meanwhile, with the weight loss and getting healthy portion of the mission, I’m having to step up clearing out my closet.

The extra large button up shirts are getting tossed out, one by one. I’m a little sad to see some of them go, but… I really haven’t done a real wardrobe update in a couple of years and I was swimming in them.

My usual t-shirts are just fine, though I suspect I will have to replace some of them by summer.

Every now and again, someone asks me about how I come up with ideas for “One Month at a Time.”

The usual answer is that about half of the topics are things I’ve thought about, but haven’t done much to learn about. The other half are things either an editor or someone else has come up with that sounded pretty good for one reason or another.

Good is a relative term. Often, what makes for a good idea is something that sounds awful to me like handling guns, performing in front of a large crowd or committing to some kind of exercise plan.

Generally, these are also the things I come to with little actual knowledge but some preconceived notions.

I also have a list of things that I’d like to do, but haven’t been able to work out for one reason or another.

A few of these include Islam, scuba diving, caving and working in a Chinese restaurant.

When I thought the newspaper might be ending (or at least the part of my life where I worked for a newspaper), I chose to bump up learning to fly as a topic.

That was a fairly harrowing month, actually.

There is also a list of things suggested to me that sound like terrible, possibly career-ending, ideas that I consider and reconsider from time to time.

I’m not going to post any of those.

I do take suggestions. Some of my favorite months came from topics pushed forward by readers. It’s how I found myself performing with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Kanawha Kordsmen. It’s how I got involved with Spring Hill Cemetery and a historical reenactment.

So, what do I need to make a suggestion work?

Well, contact with people who can help me do the work and move the topic forward.

Sometimes, when people write or call in, they have great ideas. One that gets brought up over and over is spending a month with the police, but… it’s never the police who bring this idea up.

Feasibility to accomplish something inside of about a month.

The police example is problematic because to actually be a police officer requires quite a bit of training. Nobody is going to turn me loose with a badge and gun and tell me to go fight some crime.

Probably, Fox has already turned that into a reality television show.

Even walking me through the high points would be time consuming for everyone involved –and the suspicion would be that the police would shield me from actual danger, like going on patrol and dealing with the evil-doing public.

So, that probably wouldn’t work.

Also, cost.

A column like “One Month at a Time” is a labor of love for me. This is the best gig I’ve ever come up with, but like all other writing I’ve done, it’s not particularly lucrative.

I put a lot of time in. Some of it, I get paid for. Some of it, I do not.

I have expenses. Some of these I can turn in. Others, I can’t for one reason or another.

I operate on a shoestring budget. So, a willingness to invite me along as a guest instead of a paying customer helps.

Every once in a while, we’ll have to pick up the check for something, but it’s best to keep my costs low for long-term viability.

Generally, I think this works out. I try to be upfront that I’m going to write whatever needs to be written, whatever I notice, whatever happens to me, whatever I learn, but the exposure for whoever is probably good.

Anyway, if you’ve got an idea for a month or want to invite me along to do something, send me an email: lynch@wvgazettemail.com.